Poll: Immigration enforcement divide

A poll out Thursday finds a strong partisan divide over how law enforcement should handle immigration. Democrats and Republicans disagree over whether federal authorities or local officials should take the lead on such issues, but the poll’s respondents seemed to all agree that the government currently does a poor job of handling immigration issues.

An already polarizing subject has become even hotter in the wake of an Arizona law signed in 2010 that cracks down on illegal immigration, the most controversial parts of which have been put on hold pending a court challenge from the Justice Department.

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Transatlantic Trends, a project to study public opinion in Europe and North America, polled eight countries for the third year in a row about national attitudes toward immigration. The United States had the highest percentage of respondents — 67 percent — who said they would base their vote at least in part on a political party’s immigration stance, up 11 percent from last year.

Among Democrats, 66 percent think enforcement should be handled primarily by the federal government. A majority of Republicans — 53 percent — meanwhile, believe state and local authorities should take the lead.

Of the eight countries surveyed, the U.S. and Spain tied at 67 percent for the highest number of citizens who believe immigrants gain more benefits from the government than they pay in taxes.

The weak economy has swelled anti-immigrant sentiment. A narrow majority now says immigrants drive down wages for American citizens, and 56 percent think immigrants take jobs from natives. One-third of those polled said immigrants drive up crime in the U.S., up 10 percent from 2009. Half of Americans think only citizens and legal immigrants should have access to public schooling.

There was a correlation between those who said their personal economic situation worsened in 2010 and those who expressed a fear of immigration.

The study was sponsored by the influential German Marshall Fund of the United States, along with three other foundations. The German Marshall Fund is a nonpartisan public policy institution that focuses on promoting cooperation between North America and Europe.

Craig Kennedy, the fund’s president, called the findings “a wake-up call” for the governments.

“The survey shows that North Americans and Europeans have strong opinions about immigration policy, what works and what doesn’t,” he said in a statement. “But the survey also shows that the more one is exposed to immigrants, the more one feels positively towards them.”

There’s a positive long-term outlook, with 59 percent of American respondents saying immigrants are integrating well. But a racial divide exists: While 78 percent said second-generation Hispanics are integrating well, only 62 percent said the same about Muslim immigrants.

That’s still better than responses from Europe — in Germany, only 25 percent said Muslim immigrants are integrating well.

Europe faces many of its own immigration challenges, with a massive influx of immigrants of Muslims and others from the developing world. There’s additional tension about how much immigration policy leeway should be given to the European Union vis-à-vis the individual member states.

The survey was conducted by TNS Opinion, which used computer-assisted telephone interviews. About 1,000 Americans were interviewed from Nov. 10 to Nov. 21. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percent.